4.3. Creative Knowledge
Unlike deductive and inductive knowledge, creative knowledge does not rely on knowledge provenance. It provides plausible explanations/solutions to an issue. This, in some cases, might lead to controversies. Creative knowledge exists in three categories—analytic a-priori-based, synthetic a-priori-based, and synthetic a posteriori-based—described as follows.
Let us first consider analytic a-priori-based creative knowledge. As the name suggests, this category of knowledge is introduced by an individual to define certain concepts; however, the definitions can be considered false or true depending on the personal preference of others. This implies that some may consider the definitions to be true, whereas others may not. For example, consider the concept map depicted in Figure 6. It boils down to following statements—(1) A product attribute means an attractive attribute, reverse attribute, indifferent attribute, must-be attribute, or one-dimensional attribute; (2) Presence of an attractive attribute contributes to customer satisfaction; (3) Absence of attractive attribute does not contribute to customer dissatisfaction. The first statement is a piece of analytic a-priori-based creative knowledge. The reason is as follows. Here, statement (1) classifies product attributes into five types (Kano et al., 1984; Ullah and Tamaki, 2011). Other researchers may define product attributes in other possible ways. Consequently, this statement may be true for some product developers and false or partially true for others. On the other hand, statements (2) and (3) do not qualify as pieces of analytic-a-priori-based creative knowledge because these statements collectively define the nature of the attractive attribute exclusively. Thus, statements (2) and (3) represent definitional knowledge. Besides the above mentioned example, consider the following statements to further understand the analytic-a-priori-based creative knowledge—(1) “Fundamental human needs demonstrate a hierarchy, and they can be classified in the ascending order as—physiological needs, safety needs, social belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization;” (2) “Fundamental human needs are non-hierarchical, and they can be classified as subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, and freedom.” Both these statements define human needs in two different ways. Therefore, both represent pieces of analytic-a-priori-based creative knowledge. The former statement was proposed by Maslow (Maslow, 1943, 1954), whereas the latter was proposed by Max-Neef (Max-Neef, 1991, 1992; Ullah et al., 2016). If someone attempts another definition of human needs will be created. However, its category would remain unchanged—analytic-a-priori-based creative knowledge. Thus, the definition of knowledge presented in section 3 boils down to some pieces of analytic a-priori-based creative knowledge.